NinaJohnson

Gaby Collins-Fernández: Very High Baroque

September 14th - October 14th, 2023
  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández: Very High Baroque, Installation View. Photography by Clare Gatto

Nina Johnson is pleased to present Very High Baroque, a solo exhibition of new works by artist Gaby Collins-Fernández. Opening September 14th in the Front Gallery, Collins-Fernández will showcase nine paintings which display previously uncharted levels of density, ephemerality, and abstraction, while evoking the artist’s emotions, memories, and visual inheritances.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández, Not Better, Just Different, 2023, Oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel and chiffon, 68 x 52 in

Born and raised in New York City to a Cuban-American family, Collins-Fernández is known for collaging digital imagery printed on varied textiles to create paintings that are a hybrid of the digital, physical, and photographic worlds. Her tactile and dynamic compositions complicate ideas of abstraction, figuration, and where the hand begins and ends.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Detail of Gaby Collins-Fernández, The Only Way Out of a Spiral is to Wake Up, 2023
  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández: Very High Baroque, Installation View. Photography by Clare Gatto

These new works employ a meticulous, step-by-step process in which the artist draws inspiration from the past by using  personal and family photos and historical artworks. The artist’s process begins with digital photo-collages that are then printed on unconventional materials such as beach towels, chiffon, and double-sided sequins. These printed substrates are diligently cut and sewn together to form a surface of shifting opacity and transparency,  primed with clear acrylic that the artist then completes with layers of oil paint.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández, Self Portrait as a Tabletop Sculpture on Fire (After Matisse), 2023, Oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel, chiffon, and double-sided sequins, 68 x 52 in.

For Collins-Fernández, this rigorous technique is deeply personal; these works allow the artist to reflect on how emotions and memories are organized within (and without) the body, and prompt us to consider how a painting can render history in a new, timely manner.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández, The Consequences of Becoming An Object, 2023, Oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel and chiffon, 68 x 52 in.
  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández: Very High Baroque, Installation View. Photography by Clare Gatto

Working iteratively and stochastically, the artist channels visual and physical influences to embody a unique vision of painting’s potential in the 21st century, navigating its complexities amidst the myriad forms and formats of imagery we encounter in daily life. Having grown up in New York City, much of the spatial logic in Collins-Fernández’s work demonstrates the stacked, frenetic energy of the city, and its emotionally and psychologically crowded atmosphere.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Detail of Gaby Collins-Fernández, The Change Fell Out of Your Eye, 2023
  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández, New Grids, 2023, Oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel and chiffon, 68 x 104 in.

In Collins-Fernández’s introspective exploration, formal and imagistic elements emerge as recurring motifs. The title of the show refers to the artist’s sustained interest in the Baroque as a historical and colonial aesthetic; a style defined by artifice and repetition; and a logic of reproduction and repetition. Baroque image structures are foundationally referential—they use pre-existing forms and iconography to reflect on shared knowledge within highly elaborate material structures. Similarly, Collins-Fernández uses the logic of connotations, the reflective function of algorithms, and affective materiality to comment on the abstraction underlying contemporary emotional and pictorial dynamics.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Detail of Gaby Collins-Fernández, New Grids, 2023
  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández: Very High Baroque, Installation View. Photography by Clare Gatto

“One of the things I am most excited about in this show is the new levels of density and abstraction in the work. The paintings feel like they are challenging me as I approach making them, and they also have been really surprising in terms of how they resolve—which ironically makes them difficult to write and talk about,” said Gaby Collins-Fernández.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández, Very High Baroque, 2023, Oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel and chiffon, 68 x 52 in.

“I thought coming into this body of work that I would be zeroing in on particular subject matter, and it turns out that what I have been focusing on is more ephemeral: transparency, the overlay of images, how to create a space which is both denser and deeper and more filled with light.”

Very High Baroque is on view through October 14, 2023.

  • Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abstraction, Very High Baroque, Miami, Nina Johnson, New York, Painter, Exhibition
    Gaby Collins-Fernández, Upside Down, It Gets Lonely, 2023, Oil and acrylic paint and digital photocollage print on beach towel and chiffon, 68 x 52 in.
  • Gaby Collins-Fernández: Very High Baroque, Installation View. Photography by Clare Gatto
Gaby Collins-Fernández

Gaby Collins-Fernández is an artist living and working in New York City. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College (B.A.) and the Yale School of Art (M.F.A., Painting/Printmaking). Her work has been shown in the US and internationally, including at Peter Freeman, Inc., the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama and el Museo del Barrio, NY. Her work has been discussed in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail and artcritical, and on the video interview series, Gorky's Granddaughter. She is a recipient of residencies at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), The Marble House Project (Dorset, VT), and the Elizabeth Murray Art Residency (Granville, NY), and a 2013 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Art Award. She is also a 2023-4 resident of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Collins-Fernández is also a writer whose texts have appeared in Cultured Magazine, The Miami Rail, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is a founder and publisher of the annual magazine Precog, and a co-director of the artist-run art and music initiative BombPop!Up.